Laurie Holden is an award-winning Canadian-American film and television actress known for portraying strong, determined women mostly in the science fiction, action, and horror genres. Her career has spanned more than 40 years and she is a producer, model, and human rights activist.
Holden began her career in showbusiness with minor roles in projects directed by her stepfather, Michael Anderson. She attended McGill University, where she studied economics and political science, and then went on to the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving a degree in theater and film. She then attended Columbia University, where she earned her master’s degree in human rights.
Holden began gaining recognition early on in her career by co-starring opposite Burt Reynolds in “Physical Evidence,” Vanessa Redgrave in “Young Catherine,” and William Shatner in the TV Movie “TekWar: TekLab.” She had guest appearances on “Due South,” “Murder, She Wrote,” and “Poltergeist: The Legacy,” with her breakthrough in the role of Marita Covarrubias, a mysterious government worker, on the influential 1990s classic “The X-Files.”
Her star quickly rising, Holden went on to have roles in “The Magnificent Seven,” “Highlander: The Series,” and Frank Darabont's film “The Majestic.” She flexed her acting skills in the art-horror film adaptation of the video game “Silent Hill,” carried a Colt revolver to fight monsters in “The Mist,” and then reunited with Darabont to fight zombies in AMC’s “The Walking Dead” as Andrea, a former civil rights attorney turned survivalist.
Most recently, Holden appears in season three of “The Boys” as the Crimson Countess, a former ‘It Girl’ superhero struggling to remain relevant. The parallel to real life in Hollywood is not lost on the actress.
“It's really a satire of celebrity culture and what we do to our heroes, what we do to our icons, for no apparent reason except for what's new and what's in fashion,” she said in an interview with CBR.
Holden’s activism focuses on women's rights and racial justice, and she actively campaigns against sex trafficking as a founding member of the Somaly Mam Foundation. She has worked with Operation Underground Railroad, a volunteer organization that aims to hunt down and arrest child sex traffickers, which led to the rescue of several underage girls and the arrest of five sex-traffickers in Cartagena, Colombia in 2014.